Yard Sale Saturday

    Yard Sales tend to be hit or miss and we found the best things at the last two sales that happened to be near the restaurant where we were eating breakfast.  The owner of this rug just moved from a 3,000 sq foot house to 1,000 sq house but it had a really long back yard that would be amazing to have parties in or put a giant shed for extra storage or another room.  They own a shop so they knew the history of their pieces and were offering fair prices. This rug came in two parts because it was made on a small loom used by children.  I love how bright the colors are in this rug and it made my friend a very happy new owner.

      I picked up a bunch of different fabrics that I want to turn into aprons.  I spent a little bit more on these than I usually do but it was the only thing on my stop and my own buy so I was happy to fork over the 12 bucks.  I'm the queen of the dollar sale. Battenberg lace and floral dreaminess.

goofing off

I'm currently drawing pictures of aliens with my dip pen because I can.  I painted watercolor over regular gesso and if you go back to fix any spots that don't have any color you get interesting layered results. Interesting as in your mistakes are really obvious.  So I went back in with my pen and drew the pictures I saw emerging from the page.  I took a class with the lovely Carla Sonheim a few years ago and she has a bunch of great techniques where you draw what you see in pen or paint splotches.

Reference photos

 I take a lot of reference photos or drawn notes to help inspire ideas. I rarely print them out but will look at them till I get an idea and delete them.  I love the color combination in the rug below and I'm sure it will end up as something decorative in my journal very soon.

         I spent the afternoon in an art library called the Athenaeum , with my sister and mother, reading magazines and enjoying a sunny day by the water.  The library has over 30 art and design magazines to look at while sitting in old fashioned chairs taking copious notes( my idea of heaven) and pouring over books that are not in the budget.  I have to go back to really get into the books they have on hand and I pulled this Frida Kahlo so I could get a better look at the cover.  I love how the book designer figured out a way to simulate the look of scalloped tin complete with hammer nail holes.  I wasn't crazy about the way the book was written but it was nice to revisit the pieces.  Frida is one of my favorite movies and I wish her pieces would come to life like they did in the film.
      We were lucky enough to see them setting up a new exhibit and hear the artists (college students) talk about their work and evaluate how their pieces looked in the space.  The exhibits range from book arts, oil paintings and mixed media objects.
         The library is surrounded by great little shops and we had a great time window shopping and looking for ribbon.  My mom fell in love with this one size fits most (I'm not kidding it was a size 4) sweater.  Everything was from Korean designers which accounts for the size differences but they did have bigger sizes in other items while still retaining that one of a kind feeling throughout the store. 

More mother's day fun

A friend gave me a fortune telling deck with pictures for Susan Shie (she makes amazing quilter) a few months ago and I pulled out the pictures I liked and redrew them Susan Shie amazing quilter

Luckily for mother's day I had one piece of art paper left and  a few picture scraps.  My mother loves mudcloth fabric and I found an inexpensive mudcloth like jacket that fit her perfectly. 

 Roses are still blooming.  This one right in front of one of the oldest and wildly painted homes in Little Italy.  The yellow looks amazing behind roses and you can't see the large cherubs above the gate.

Using scraps

Hooray for finally using up all these scraps.  Dried roses that I glued to a piece of white paper (4 years ago), cut up sample cups (similar to cupcake baking cups) watercolor paper scraps cut into letters, tissue from a shopping trip, old photos,vellum paper, metal tape and tracing paper.

Sping Journal